House Alpha
by Generation Extant
Summary: The Doctor encounters a curious old professor who is hiding a substantial secret. (This story was originally published March 10-31, 2010 at Generation Extant dot com.)


Russell heard the TARDIS touch down and hurried to the door. Colleen followed close behind, both eager to see what the Doctor had in store this time. Indeed, it seemed like there was something that was beginning to come together, and if anyone could figure it out, it would be that strange little man.  
"Doctor, aren't you coming?" Russell asked as he straightened out the lapels in his vest the Doctor had given him.  
"In a moment, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor was still standing at the console, a small smile on his lips, "In a moment."  
He pressed one button, and the central column of the time rotor pulsed once with light, as if firing off a shot, then subsided.  
"What did you do?" Russell asked, always the skeptic. The Doctor joined him at the door, pulling his camelhair jacket on and adjusting his golden necktie.  
"I believe you would call it 'instant messaging,' Mr. Garamond.'  
And that was all he would say. With one movement, he swung open the door, and Colleen and Russell were shocked to find themselves perfectly docked within the confines of an office. The walls were adorned with old and well-seasoned wooden bookshelves, all stuffed with too many books to count, many of them first editions, from the look of it. More books spilled out into piles on the floor, and still more were piled on an equally antique and polished desk to the point of obscuring whoever was sitting behind it. Aside from a few papers knocked askew by the TARDIS landing, the entire scene seemed unsettlingly…normal.  
"Well done, girl," the Doctor mused, patting the side of the TARDIS, "I could land this thing on a dime… when I want to."  
"Doctor, where are we?"  
"Always with the questions, you are," the Doctor waggled a finger in mock severity, "Such a skeptic. Probably why I like having you around. Anyway, why not try asking our generous host where we are?"  
"Your host is less than generous, and wishes you would leave."  
The voice was American, slightly nasal, and utterly disinterested. Two stacks of books slid aside to reveal a middle-aged man with neatly parted, graying hair and a trim goatee, looking particularly displeased.  
"Please remove yourself from my office. I'm not taking visitors."  
He was busy poring over a particularly large book, which seemed to take up most of the available space on his desktop.  
"Oh, I think you'll be taking visitors like us," the Doctor said with a whimsical sort of seriousness, "you see, we're travelers in time and space."  
The man behind the desk sighed heavily with frustration. He held up one of he nearby books, which read in broad, sprawling text: UNKNOWN TO TIME. Underneath was a smaller font reading "V.T. Ackley." The man threw the book back down with a snort.  
"Yeah, you and every other fan."  
"I beg your pardon?" The Doctor cocked an eyebrow.  
"I get nutjobs like you once in a while," he leaned back, intertwining his fingers, "They read my books, and they come in here claiming to be one of my lost race of interstellar beings, lost in time and space. I try to explain to them that it's only a story, but they just can't get it through their tinfoil hats. It usually ends with me having to ask security to escort them off…."  
His eyes drifted momentarily toward the TARDIS, then back again with a snap.  
"Forcibly, if necessary."  
"How very rude!" the Doctor huffed, "What a pompous egotist!"  
"I bet you hate having competition," Russell thought to himself. The Doctor slammed his hands down on the stacks of books and pierced Mr. Ackley with a stare.  
"Don't tell me you don't know who I am," the rotund man glared out between twin towers of tomes. Ackley hesitated for just a moment before responding with suspicious rapidity:  
"Never seen you before in my life."  
"You hesitated," Russell noted, but Ackley dismissed him with a snarl, now completely denied his afternoon of reading.  
"Look, you all went through a lot of trouble to get here, I'm sure…" he stood up briskly and gestured toward the TARDIS, "The spaceship is a particularly nice touch, though…must have been a real terror getting it through the door. What is that, a telephone booth?"  
"Actually, it's-"  
He cut Colleen off with such brusqueness that the little Irish girl gave a squeak and hid behind Russell's narrow frame. He continued his frogmarch to the door of his office, his crassness seemingly unending.  
"Please tell me which guard you bribed at the front gate, and I'll fire him… right after he boots you off my property. If you want autographs, I'll be at the Chicago Hilton next week signing the new book. Come there. We'll have a laugh. Buy me a drink and we'll have more. Now…" he opened the door and gestured angrily.  
"Please get the hell out."  
Russell and Colleen had been watching the whole scene unfold with a mixture of shock and confusion. Surely this isn't what the Doctor had had in mind. Meanwhile, the Doctor was looking over Mr. Ackley's book, and chuckling to himself.  
"You're trying too hard, you know," he mused, tracing the embossed title, "You're putting up too much of a front… "Unknown to Time," hah!"  
He whirled round, facing Ackley waving the book about in front of him.  
"You've done well, Mr. Ackley, very, very well to keep yourself hidden. All of this time here, on this planet, and I've never found you… you've done very well, indeed!"  
"What are you talking about, you Limey weirdo?"  
"You gave it away, here…" he tapped the hardcover, "You finally gave it away. This book, your book…it gives it all away! You see, I had my suspicions when the TARDIS computer first picked this information out of the intergalactic ether, but I dismissed it as coincidence. However, events of the past few days…" he looked over to Russell and Colleen, apparently very distant cousins, "Have lead me to believe that coincidences are bunk, more or less."  
"Henry Ford," Ackley sniffed, determined not to be undone.  
"Yes, Henry Ford…" the Doctor began to pace around the office, hands behind his back, "Perhaps you knew him, Mr. Ackley, or perhaps you… were him… were you him, Mr. Ackley?"  
Every time he said "Mr. Ackley," it carried just a bit of mocking patronization. Ackley screwed his face up in a mask of frustration.  
"Cripes," he exclaimed, "You're crazier than all the others."  
"I am never crazy," the Doctor said, his eyes glinting, "but often mad. You see, I'd be mad to think that I could toss DNA from my companions here," he waved to Colleen and Russell, still thunderstruck, "into a Nucleic Acid analyzer, and I'd be mad to think that I could toss my own half-human, half-Gallifreyan makeup into the same structure…and that they would match!"  
"Galli-what? What are you talking about?" Ackley sputtered, clearly losing this battle of wits now.  
"Oh come now, Mr. Ackley," the Doctor rolled his eyes and moved uncomfortably close to the author, "You're a member of House Alpha."  
"Wrong author, buddy," Ackley snorted, "I didn't go to Hogwarts."  
The Doctor paid him no heed, but continued blustering about, as he was often wont to do.  
"V.T. Ackley… Vee… tee! I say, could that possibly stand for something like oh, I don't know…Vetiver Tunnyson Ackley?"  
He turned to the back inside cover of the book and crowed.  
"A-ha! So it does!"  
"I hate that name!" Ackley exploded, "Why do you think I go by initials, it's so.."  
"It's so you can hide who you are!" the Doctor shouted back, "It's a perversion of your real name, isn't it? It boils your blood to see your name have to be changed such, doesn't it… Vetaiverturnysonyyackel?"  
Ackley blanched at that, and he knew it was no use. His hand was quivering as the door latched and he turned to the Doctor, lips nearly ashen.  
"So it is you… Doctor."  
"In the rather ample flesh," he cried, slapping his stomach, "Last regeneration went a little bad…you know how it goes…"  
"Yes, I do know…" Ackley said with a heavy voice that suddenly sounded so old, "and I thought no one would ever know but… but you Doctor… I should have known you'd find me someday."  
"I always was a bee in the bonnet," the Doctor beamed, "stirring up trouble."  
"We noticed," Ackley nodded, "All of us in House Alpha. We were always watching you."  
"And helping me, if I'm not mistaken,"  
"No," Ackley said gravely, "We've done our best to keep away from any other Gallifreyan activity… any other."  
"Just more coincidences, I suppose," the Doctor shrugged, mostly unfazed by Ackley's gravitas. Russell, on the other hand, felt one question needed to be asked.  
"What about the Time War?"  
Ackley turned to him, and Russell immediately regretted his decision. Ackley's eyes were almost overflowing with hot, bitter tears.  
"God damn the Time War," he spat, "and God damn anyone who talks about it."  
The Doctor put a comforting arm around the shoulders of Ackley's elbow-patched sportcoat. The two shared a moment before the Doctor began again.  
"I believe…" he took a pause to collect his thoughts gently, "that you will find our friend Mr. Ackley under the heading of a 'conscientious objector,' along with the rest of House Alpha."  
"Doctor," Colleen spoke up when it became clear that Ackley meant them no more harm, "Is House Alpha what I'm thinking it is?"  
The Doctor guided Ackley back to his seat and gave a little laugh.  
"That depends on what you think it is, my dear."  
"Well, it would seem," she chewed her lip nervously as she worked her cybernetic brain, constantly cautious of it, "By calling them Alpha, it would mean that they were the first of something. And, with our ancestors being in House Alpha…they are, right?"  
"You assumptions are sound, m'gel… but don't start a sentence with 'And.'"  
Colleen blushed a little, but the Doctor beckoned her to continue.  
"Then they must have come here long ago, or at least long enough for them to breed with humans and make…us?"  
"That mind of yours really is something," the Doctor grinned, "If the Cyber-Controller could see you now."  
"Cyber-Controller?" Ackley recoiled in his chair, aghast.  
"She's what happens when you try to make a cyborg in 19-century Ireland," Russell said with a little grin. He looked over at Colleen, who blushed furiously.  
"I see…" Ackley relaxed a bit and turned to the Doctor, "With the Time War over, Doctor… I figured it would be safe to use my name, to tell our story without fear of repercussion. Those men, they called themselves Lords of Time, and Rassilon, he was becoming so very dangerous… when we crashed here, we knew we could hide from it all… we wanted none of what was to become of Gallifrey, even if it meant leaving everything we loved about it."  
"Don't worry, my good man," the Doctor again gripped the author's shoulder, "They have received their punishment."  
The strange man's face was grim then, and his jaw was set firm. He looked straight through the wall of the office, into parts unknown. Russell knew he could lose him for minutes, possibly hours when he got like this, so he spoke up, hoping to catch it early.  
"So who was House Alpha, anyway?"  
The Doctor was shaken out of his reverie, and turned to Ackley.  
"You'll help me fill in all the other bits, won't you?"  
Ackley smiled at this, his first smile since they had met him.  
"Of course."

"In the old days," Ackley began, "Eons ago, farther back than any human can imagine, the inhabitants of Gallifrey grew into a savage and tribal collective, ruled over by a cruel line of despots. Her name was Pythia, and she was the source of Gallifrey's fertility. A young Gallifreyan by the name of Rassilon seized power from the Pythia, and in her protest she killed herself, cursing our race with never-ending barrenness. Once this was realized by the Gallifreyans, who had abandoned the Pythia's superstition for the crown of rationality, they began work on a new way to give us what could be eternal life: they crated the Looms."  
"I remember those," Russell said, "They could create life out of…primordial soup."  
Ackley's eyes grew wide and he turned them on the Doctor.  
"They have seen Gallifrey? We were told it had burned, out of time itself!"  
"It's a long story," the Doctor said, fixing Russell with a glare, "The Looms were created, and when they were we Gallifreyans realized that we could give ourselves eternal life."  
"But the first experiments with the Loom were horrible, unreal abominations," Ackley interjected, "not fit for this or any world. Their power was too great, their command over reality itself too powerful. They were cast into the Void Between Dimensions and the Looms were retooled."  
"We were given thirteen lives and the ability to regenerate: when our bodies would prove too taxed, we could refresh them and start anew…but only thirteen times. It was the crowning achievement of Rassilon's Rationality dogma."  
He ended that on a bitter note, and Ackley nodded with sage recognition and picked up the story from his own point of view.  
"They called us House Alpha: the first full clutch of Loom-born. They were seen as the triumph of Rationality over Pyhtia's taint, and as a celebration of the success, House Alpha was sent on a Grand Tour of the Universe. This served two purposes: to exhibit ourselves as a wonder to the rest of creation… and to further bolster fear of Rassilon's growing power. We in House Alpha, we knew what power Rassilon could hold, with his new declarations, claiming Lords of Time and Space. We sabotaged our ship, sending it spinning off through the galaxy."  
"You landed on Earth?!" Colleen said, amazed and aghast at the revelation.  
"We did," Ackley smiled and nodded slightly, "You are a rather smart girl. Once landed, we set about removing any way for us to contact home, our loved ones, our lives… we set about removing everything that made us Gallifreyans, and we strove to become fully and impeccably… human. We began to live out each of our thirteen lives: we lived, we died, we married, we gave birth. We started life anew, a true regeneration. We wanted no more of Gallifrey, Rassilon, and the horrible power it would wreak on the universe in ages to come.  
"Rassilon's never stopped growing," the Doctor grumbled, "Not even when he died. In the last days of his reign he commissioned a way for resurrection to be performed: not regeneration, but a renewal of the original body itself. It is because of his hubris and lust for power that Gallifrey is burnt from the sky, burnt from time itself!"  
"And yet we remember," Ackley's eyes were wet again, "Why do we remember, Doctor?"  
"Time works in mysterious ways, Mr. Ackley," the Doctor patted his shoulder gently, "And even the so-called 'Time Lords' could not completely bend it to their will."  
"So you say, Doctor. So you say."  
In the open doorway stood the Master: tall and strong, with a sinister, handsome face and a dark Van Dyke. He was clad in a black duster coat that reached to his knees, with creased black trousers and black shoes. Under the jacket a starched white shirt could be seen with a simple collar and black cross tie. The Master shed his jacket, hanging it on a nearby hook, and revealed a double-breasted vest done in black brocade. He continued talking as he walked about the room.  
"And yet…are there not several times where you have bent the very laws of time and space to your own particular will, Doctor?"  
His words were slow and deliberate, impeccably pronounced, carrying a bite of venom underneath.  
"Why didn't you keep your beard, Doctor?" he said suddenly, almost jovially, "It suited you."  
"With us being the last two Time Lords in existence, I'd hate to feel like I was copying you," the Doctor shot back immediately in a flat and callous tone.  
"Oh, but are we?" The Master began walking about again, with each pass of the bookshelves coming closer to Ackley's desk, "Are we truly the last of the Time Lords? What of House Alpa, Mr. 'Ackley?' Have they all gone?"  
"I am the last," Ackley said with a sad nod, "The others have lived all their thirteen lives: some went naturally, some chose to die, but all have gone save myself, the one who had to tell their story, even as a fiction… before it was too late."  
"How very smart of you," the Master said with a smug, tight-lipped smile, "but you must have chosen this time to die, just like the others of your house."  
Ackley heaved a heavy sigh and rose from his chair. The Doctor made to hold him fast, but the author from House Alpha simply shook his head. Undeterred, Ackley stood face to face with the Master, though he was a fair bit shorter.  
"So… the Doctor… and the Master…" he looked from one to the other, then back to the man in black, "Does that make me the Bachelor?"  
He chuckled a little at his bad joke, but noticed no one else shared his merriment.  
"Still," he placed his hands into his trouser pockets, "I knew that I was very possibly signing my death warrant by even speaking of the fate of House Alpha. With Gallifrey gone…"  
The Master flinched slightly at that, as if the words hurt him a little. Ackley continued.  
"I figured my safety could be a bit more ensured. I hardly think either of you would be sending Judoon after me or anything…right?"  
The Doctor smiled a bit and shook his head. The Master, surprisingly, did the same, but it was soon to be revealed that his smile was not one of gentleness.  
"It is interesting," the Master mused, "that you mention the Judoon. You see, I ran afoul of a Judoon battalion some months ago."  
"I've never heard of it," the Doctor challenged.  
"Of course you haven't, Doctor," the Master was almost purring now, "Because the Judoon would never let a story reach the populous that involved an entire battalion being wiped out by one man."  
The Doctor snorted with derision.  
"I'm supposed to believe that?"  
The Master's grin grew wider.  
"You won't have to believe it, Doctor. I'll make it perfectly clear. You see," He turned his attention back to Ackley, who was still standing bravely in front of him, "A Judoon weapon is a directed energy weapon, meant to disintegrate its enemy. Do you know what that technology is similar to?"  
"Stop," the Doctor hissed, clearly upset.  
"I suspect that you do," the Master was still grinning as he produced a peculiar looking item from inside his vest. It was black, and looked vaguely like a gun, but was meant to be held with the barrel protruding from between the two middle fingers. The moment the Doctor saw it, Russell saw him recoil in horror.  
"What is that thing?" he asked, aghast.  
"It's… it's…" the Doctor was actually lost for words.  
"It's a Tissue Compression Eliminator!" Colleen shrieked, throwing herself into Russell's shoulder, trying in vain to shut out the information fed to her via her cybernetic mind. The Master threw back his head in a diabolical laugh, yet Ackley still stood firm.  
"Quite right, little Irish one," he cackled, "It did take some time, make no mistake, and took nearly fifty Judoon guns to power this one little item. I've been waiting to try it out, and you've given me such a perfect target. Surely, if it can kill a Gallifreyan…"  
"Don't!" The Doctor shouted, bolting from the wall. Ackley held out a hand, holding the Doctor where he stood.  
"It's all right, Doctor," the author said with a grim-set jaw, "Don't…"  
"How can you, Master?" the Doctor bellowed, cutting Ackley off, "How can you think to kill this man? He is our last link to the Gallifreyan people of old! The things he must know! The knowledge he must have! I thought you would agree with me on this, that you would join with me in the preservation and the celebration of what remains of our race! I spared your life with the hope that we would rebuild the life we lost!"  
"What do I want with the life we lost, Doctor?" The Master hissed back, "the life that cursed me, ruined me, broke my mind and called me outcast because of it? I don't want any of that life, Doctor. I am what I am because of that life. You want to return to that?"  
He paused for a moment, tapping the barrel of the TCE to his chin, as if in deep thought. A smile crept back to his features as his thought returned to him.  
"You know…" he began, almost whimsical, "For all the problems I had with the old Time Lord society, I have to say I admired some of its laws."  
He pointed the barrel once more at Ackley's chest.  
"Especially the one that puts a coward to the sword."  
There was a flash of red light, one truncated scream from Ackley, and then he was gone. House Alpha was no more.

All stood aghast. V. T. Ackley, author, philanthropist, and last survivor of the long-thought-lost Gallifreyan House Alpha was dead. He was gone, every particle in his body compressed to a level beyond subatomic at the hands of the Master and his horrific weapon, the Tissue Compression Eliminator. The Doctor, Colleen, and Russell had been powerless to stop the carnage, and Ackley himself had asked them not to interfere, lest they be eliminated, too. Ackley, formerly known as the Time Lord Vetaiverturnyonyyackel, had died unflinching, refusing to plead, refusing to beg. The Master looked upon his new weapon and cooed, almost lovingly.  
"My. my, my… quite a powerful version, I must say. Those Judoon power cores really add a certain…stringency."  
"Master…" the Doctor's voice was boiling over with badly-concealed rage, "How could you…"  
"I did what was right in my own eyes, Doctor," the Master spat back, pointing the TCE at each person in turn to keep their distance, "And I did what the rules of Gallifrey would have done. This man was a coward, his entire house were craven fools. Had I the power I would destroy every one of them in turn, for Gallifrey… and for me!"  
The Doctor's voice turned mocking then, spiteful.  
"I didn't know you to be such steadfast proponent to the old ways."  
"I'm not," he countered, "and I wasn't. But even you and I, Doctor, cardinal offenders that we were, answered the call when we were summoned across the universe and beyond. They culled me from the grave to fight, and I was glad for it, and I fought beside you on the hills of Wild Endeavor. We shouldered arms at Arcadia, you and I…"  
"And you fled."  
"The war was lost," the Master's voice turned bitter, almost wistful, "I knew what you were planning, and I wanted no part of it. I ran, and I rain… but your magic was quick, Doctor, and I was pulled back into that damnation within the Eye of Harmony, again tormented and anguished within the heart of that black hole. It was because of that, Doctor, because of you robbing the life I had so recently been given again, that I hate you… I truly hate you."  
The Doctor struck up the courage to move back around the desk, standing where Ackley once stood, before he was no more.  
"Believe me," he said, a little bit of his haughtiness returning, "I'll cry later. Do you mean to tell me, Master, that you executed that man for not heeding the call of duty, for Castellan and country?"  
"Don't be flippant, Doctor," the Master once again brandished his fearsome weapon. The Doctor was unimpressed, "They had been Pariahs from our society for centuries, runaways like you and I who lacked the common decency to give their support to the ones who gave them life…"  
"Do you think I wanted to, Master?" the Doctor shouted point-black in the Master's face, "Do you think I had a choice? Do you think any of us did? We were rounded up like cattle, from the reaches of time and space. I had contracts on my head in every galaxy, on every time plane. Time Police were constantly after me, no matter how I tried to hide, don't you see? These people were hidden, thought dead, away from all of it… they were able to start a new life, they didn't need to answer the summons, they were free to live as they please without some bloated bureaucrat signing them into service at gunpoint! For you, the war was liberation, but for the rest of us it was slavery: a bloody, horrible slavery that we would have done anything to escape from. You know the horrors we endured, Master. That's why you fled, and you dare call these people cowards? If anyone in this room is a coward, it's not the man you just murdered…"  
He took one more step closer, until his forehead was nearly flush with the Master's chin.  
"It's you."  
The Master's lip curled upward into a disdainful sneer. His finger toyed with the trigger on the TCE, but rather than strike out, he began a sinister chuckle that erupted into a boisterous, evil laugh that reverberated throughout the late Mr. Ackley's study.  
"Ah, I'm sorry, Doctor…" he wiped away a tear born from mirth, "but I simply cannot take you seriously in this regeneration. You look so ridiculous with your little pot belly and that button nose, all roly-poly… you're like a baby to look at."  
Now it was the Doctor's turn to screw up his face in frustration. The Master knew he had hit upon a nerve and continued.  
"Yes, this regeneration wasn't exactly what you had in mind, was it? Why is it, Doctor, that I almost always regenerate into someone tall, dark and handsome and you…well, don't?"  
"I like to spend more of my regenerative energy making sure my mind isn't that of a sociopath," the Doctor replied curtly.  
"Oh, now what makes you say something like that?" the fiend seemed almost put out, "Is it because I killed a man in cold blood…again?"  
He appealed to Russell and Colleen with a simpering smile, but got only hated glares.  
"After all the Doctor did for you," Russell spat, "After he spared your life…"  
"Oh yes," the Master reveled in Russell's contempt, "Please, go on! Say them all, I never get tired of them! Tell me I'll never get away with this, call me a monster, say I'm just no good, or perhaps…"  
With a blinding flash of light and a whiff of sulfur, the TCE inexplicably exploded in the Master's hand, driving painful shards into his palm. The black Gallifreyan leapt back, howling in pain as blood began to pour out of his hand. The Doctor took this chance to laugh now, a laugh almost as spiteful as the Master's had been.  
"Oh, I see you still don't understand the complexities of my friends," the Doctor sighed and shook his head while the Master lurched over, gasping, "The cybernetic mind contains so much power, don't you know, and when you combine that with the full spectrum of human emotion…"  
He slammed both hands on either side of the Master's injured palm, relishing in hearing his old enemy wail in agony.  
"And you never know what you'll get!"  
The Master screamed.  
"You shouldn't have insulted her husband, Master, that's what did it… must have thrown a cybernetic pulse clear across the room, isn't that fascinating?"  
"Have mercy!" the Master pleaded. The Doctor looked at him with a vicious eye.  
"You never did."  
"Please!"  
The Doctor ground his hand a little harder, and it appeared that smoke started to swirl out from the Master's hand.  
"But you're such a grand fellow, Master. I'd love to shake you by the hand!"  
The Doctor laughed again, a laugh that bordered on manic, until a thin, white hand laid itself comfortingly on top of the Doctors', which were now nearly covered in the Master's blood. The Doctor's laughter almost immediately subsided as he turned to look into Colleen's sad, pleading eyes.  
"Please, Doctor," he heard her gentle voice over the Master's moans, "I'm sorry I did that. Help him, would you?"  
In a trice, the Doctor released the Master's hand, and the man in black crumpled to the floor, sobbing. The wound was clearly more than cuts, as some of the propellant to the gun had caused particularly nasty burns to his palm. The Doctor's bloody hands stained his camelhair jacket as he produced the sonic screwdriver, waving it over the wounds and prying the jagged pieces free.  
"The burns will take some time to heal," he said with a grave seriousness, "Hopefully it will serve as a reminder."  
"Doctor…" Colleen prodded him, "won't you say you're sorry?"  
There was a long pause as the Doctor looked down. His old enemy, the Master, was crippled with pain, lying before him in utter anguish. Should he ask for forgiveness? Did he do anything wrong? For nearly a thousand years, that man had caused him grief. They had always been at odds, even in the nursery. The Master had always been the bully, and the Doctor the defender… but had he become the bully now? Had he become the one enjoying the pain, causing useless strife to his enemies, reveling in discord?  
No.  
This was deserved punishment. The Doctor straightened his back and wiped further blood on his already ruined lapels, straightening his jacket.  
"I have nothing to be sorry for," was all he said. He beckoned for Colleen and Russell to enter the TARDIS, which they did without questioning…or perhaps out of fear. As the Doctor himself walked to his ship, he stopped at the door and turned to the Master. His voice was as cold as a dagger in the night.  
"Gallifrey is gone. Their laws no longer matter. It's my universe now, Master. Don't make me destroy you."  
He shut the door and the TARDIS dematerialized soon after, still leaving the Master to drag himself down the hall to his own ship. He would crawl inside, set the coordinates, and dematerialize his own vessel, licking his wounds and planning his revenge.  
So, he thought, the Doctor believed he could destroy me? Then I will destroy everything he has done, everything he has created… I will destroy his life. I swear upon the name of Rassilon, if it be the end of me, I will destroy the Doctor's very life!


End file.
